Making, hacking, and playing. These are the three lenses that Bud Hunt includes in his blog post “Centering on Essential Lenses.” Bud described making, hacking, and playing as the three essential metaphorical lenses to keep in any learners toolbag. They are essential lifelong learning tools that help build, shape, and develop learners.

Bud described making as an essential to any learner because it allows students the opportunity to learn more, better, fuller, and richer, and depict or share what they have learned in a creative manner that is unique to them. Making allows us to actively experience and participate in our educational process. And isn’t that how we begin learning as young children, by actively participating and creating outside and inside the classroom?

Next, Bud talked about hacking. Like in the TedTalk “Hackschooling Makes Me Happy” presented by Logan LaPlante, Bud described hacking as a positive modification of a program or process. Both Logan and Bud felt that hacking too often gets a bad rap because, essentially, we have lost the sense of the word. Logan talked about how he hacked his education to fit his needs and to teach him in the best possible way. This was all made possible because his mother pulled him out of traditional education, now, the world is his classroom. Bud said that the original meaning of hacking is worth reclaiming. In my opinion, it is worth reclaiming and acting upon in our school systems. I feel many schools have lost their way and no longer place children first, instead, tests and testing well are above everything else. School needs to be hacked and fiddled with until children are provided the education they deserve in a way that benefits each and every one of them.

Lastly, Bud talked about play, he used the definition, “The search for freedom within constraints” to define play. I feel that, that is the best way play can be described. Through play, children learn social skills that will build as they grow. They learn rules of interacting with individuals around them. The more children play, the more they learn, and the more they learn, the more they grow. Play allows children to look at their surroundings, the people within it, and the nature of the game being played. If the child does not like the game being played, they make a new one, hack it to make it fit the group, and then finally engages in the play.